Diamia Sameer derives no joy from the fall of Saddam Hussein a month ago: two days before the fall of Baghdad she lost her only daughter, her sister and her two nieces in a US attack which directly targetted the Iraqi leader.
"They all died on April 7," the 43-year-old medical secretary said in a dull voice, pointing to photographs showing a couple with two little girls in white dresses, and a pretty young woman.
"My husband disappeared in 1983 during the war with Iran, and now I've lost the rest of my family. What could I have known worse? I have no more future."
A total of 14 civilians were killed when a US aircraft dropped four huge bombs on a residential block in Al-Mansur district, acting on intelligence reports that Saddam and his two sons were there.
Saddam's fate is still unknown, though an Australian newspaper said Wednesday it had received a tape purportedly made by the ousted president this week.
His name is not among those on the black flags flying around the yawning crater that marks the spot where Diamia Sameer's family once lived.
"The Americans are responsible, but so is Saddam, who used civilians as human shields," said Bedoor, the grandmother of Mariam and Lana, the two little girls in the photograph.
"What can we say? We have suffered for 20 years from wars and sanctions, and we end up by losing our children."
A month after the fighting ended in Baghdad, dozens of families are mourning their dead and trying to care for their wounded.
"What does the liberation of Iraq mean to us? They told us, 'You will be happy when the war is over' -- I am not happy," said Entabar Jawad, 40, whose brother Mohammed was killed in a raid on April 6 as US forces were surrounding the capital.
"He worked at the Malaysian embassy and had a very good wage. He was the protector of our family and was worth 10,000 times all the Saddams or all the Americans in this world," Jawad said, shaking her head.
No precise toll has been drawn up for the number of civilian deaths during the three-week air assault on the Iraqi capital, but according to medical and humanitarian sources they can be numbered in the hundreds, despite protestations by the US-British coalition that civilians were not targets.
The wounded meanwhile still fill Baghdad's hospitals.
Renaud Douci, an official of the French organisation Premiere Urgence, said the situation in Baghdad is manageable, given that doctors are well-trained and their needs less acute than in the south of the country.
But that is no consolation to the parents keeping vigil at the bedsides of their children in hospitals like the Saddam medical centre in the middle of Baghdad.
"This boy had a future, he was in good health, but now? Who will buy him a new leg, how will he find a wife?" demanded Sunni Abdullah, fanning 15-year-old Hassun and wiping his face with a damp sponge.
"I don't believe the Americans will ever compensate us. Everything is such a mess," he added.
On the next bed 12-year-old Mustafa Ahmed listened silently. His father lifted the boy's T-shirt, exposing a long scar across his stomach, and pointed to his paralysed right leg.
Mustafa was hit by a shell splinter at Tarmiya, north of Baghdad.
"What is his future?" the father asked. "Nobody knows if he will ever walk again."
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